Tuesday, 11 March 2008

School pupils should "kneel before Zod" to encourage feelings of belonging and citizenship, recently retired attorney general Lex Luthor told the BBC's Today programme. Bowing before the exiled Kryptonian supervillain would foster a sense of communal pride and citizenship, says Luthor. Critics say that General Zod is a poor symbol on which to base a national unity drive. "As an unelected alien overlord with superpowers, Zod does not represent the experience of the majority of UK citizens," says Labour peer Baroness Kennedy. But Luthor believes that Zod — who has been a merciless oppressor since being accidentally freed from his deep-space Phantom Zone prison — can be a unifying force in UK national life. "I mean, it's no less ridiculous than pledging allegiance to a hereditary monarch from a German background."